Dr. Calvin Day, left, who is accused of rape, sits in the witness stand as first assistant district attorney Cliff Herberg, Rico Valdez of the Bexar County DA's appellate division, Catherine Babbitt of the Family Justice and Victim Protection Division and defense attorneys Jay Norton and Alan Brown confer with Judge Ron Rangel during a pre-trial hearing on Tuesday, June 4, 2013. Day is accused of rape and says that the District Attorney's office should be recused because he had sex with Reed in Las Vegas in 2006. Reed denies that it happened.

A once-prominent San Antonio dermatologist who was found guilty earlier this summer of sexually assaulting a Botox patient had his conviction and the resulting house arrest lifted Monday by the judge who oversaw the high-profile jury trial.

State District Judge Ron Rangel did not go into detail about why he granted Dr. Calvin Day's motion for a new trial but noted it was in the “interest of justice.”

A more detailed written ruling is expected in the coming weeks.

Day, 62, had faced — and could now face again — up to 20 years for alleged sexual assaults of two patients. The trial, which took place over most of June, concerned just one of the accusers and resulted in probation.

However, both women and six others — a mix of former patients and employees — testified that they also were subjected to either sexual assault or harassment at his office. Fourteen women in all have made accusations, according to court documents.

The decision Monday came after a 21/2-hour hearing in which Day's appellate attorney, Mike McCrum, was allowed to focus on only one issue: whether previous defense attorneys Alan Brown and Jay Norton had a conflict of interest with their client created by First Assistant District Attorney Cliff Herberg.

Both defense attorneys said they were unable to adequately defend Day after Herberg announced in the middle of the trial that they were under investigation for felony witness tampering regarding a previous meeting with their client's accuser.

“Mr. Norton and I were concerned about the pending criminal investigation against us, and it affected our judgment during trial to Dr. Day's detriment,” Brown said in a court affidavit. “We spent time discussing how the state could possibly make such a baseless allegation when we should have been preparing for the next day in court.”

Knowing that Day's accuser could now be their own accuser if a witness-tampering case was ever developed, it caused them to use “kid gloves” during cross-examination, Norton said.

McCrum said he had prepared to call district attorney's office employees to the witness stand in addition to Norton and Brown but decided it wasn't necessary after the judge said there never appeared to have been an actual investigation of the defense attorneys. That finding was based on an inspection by the judge on Friday of all prosecution documents concerning the Day case.

“I just find that shocking that Mr. Herberg would march into court and make these accusations against these lawyers when we now find out there was no investigation,” McCrum said after Monday's new trial ruling. “It was posturing, it was grandstanding and it was misrepresentation to the court.”

Because the Day case is now pending again, Herberg said Monday that he cannot comment on the status of any such investigation.

During the trial, Herberg showed the judge — outside the presence of jurors but in front of a crowded courtroom — an undated legal document that stated the accuser would “waive prosecution” and pay Day $10 in exchange for Day's agreement not to file a civil case against her. The proposed joint affidavit was never finalized.

The accuser's own privately hired attorney, Andrew Del Cueto, was the main person Herberg expressed suspicion of during the hearing. But he also suggested that Day's attorneys could have broken the law.

Trying to influence the outcome of a case without consent from prosecutors is illegal, and prosecutors had an ethical obligation to bring the odd situation to the court's attention, Herberg said Monday, describing the affidavit as unlike anything he had ever seen.

“You have a rich defendant and there was apparently money at play here,” Herberg said. “We were certainly acting in good faith in bringing our suspicions to the court's attention. I'm not the one who created this release that appears to violate the law. That's conduct that they did.”

McCrum, however, had a different take on the court's ruling: Herberg's actions amounted to misconduct, and McCrum said he now plans to ask the judge to bar further prosecution of Day's case based on that.

A meeting was requested with the defense attorneys but the affidavit was never signed or pursued by the lawyers because they didn't want to be accused of witness tampering, McCrum said.

McCrum described his client as “elated” by Monday's ruling. Day declined to testify during the trial but frequently touted a lie detector test outside of court supporting his contentions that the women were lying.

“He wants his day in court,” McCrum said. “He still doesn't feel like he's had his day in court. Justice has been renewed.”